clarkwinkelmann Displaying the fields in a new place is something I can do relatively easily as it won't touch the core logic of the extension
For me it's more that that form fields aren't available in the email notifications that go out for the discussion it generated. I'm relying on the emails for rich notifications that have all the info needed from the discussion (form submission) but when generated via form, I can only get some of the fields that are properly converted to text when I use the field slugs { field }
clarkwinkelmann Even though the extension has integration tests to not accidentally nuke unrelated features, it's a lot more tricky to work on anything without having to adjust code everywhere.
What type of features could it nuke, are you referring to if it were to edit the discussion post if the form submission was modified or just in general? Since the form generated a discussion, I would assume there would be a link available between the two (and it's how it knows to display the field above a particular discussion) so that if a form submission were modified from the discussion page it should be able to edit the first post with the regenerated post content? Maybe I'm oversimplifying but it seems to me like a slight extension of the existing feature.
new form submission -> create discussion post
edit form submission -> edit (re-write) the discussion post
It would be a one way conversion
Date Field -> String
Radio Selected Value -> String
Checkbox Selected Values -> CSV String
Short Text -> String
Long Text -> String
etc
clarkwinkelmann Maybe you can send me a screenshot of your form so I can get a better idea of what kind of information you insert in new discussions? I want to make sure I understand the use case.
I'm sending things like maintenance notifications with dates & times (hence the DateTime field ask), impact of maintenance, what item is being worked on, etc and I'm mentioning the affected users via groups. I provide all the necessar details in the discussion, and the group mention kicks off the notifications to the users. I'm using the discussion templates extension right now to try and provide standardized format where admins just have to fill out the blanks, however it's not perfect as everything is free text instead of using proper date time fields, drop downs, etc so even with the templates they are still not very consistent and leaves more room for errors. This is what I want to use forms to generate that discussion, so the discussion content always has the same format.
Do your users reply to the discussion, or are you using this feature for something completely non-discussion related?
No they do not. However having it in the format of a discussion also lets users subscribe to these notifications under a given tag which is why I prefer to keep it as a discussion. It also means there is a record of it that is accessible to all users if they need one spot to view all of these posts instead of hunting through emails. The initial email notification is still important to make them aware of it in the first place.
clarkwinkelmann The extension already has its own confirmation/notification emails for standalone forms that could also be extended to send as some kind of newsletter, but then there won't be any option to "reply".
I have used the extension email notifications before for other purposes, like collecting feedback/surveys from users but due to the reasons above I think having the discussion link is quite important. Also these emails follow a different format than prettymail so I prefer to only use it when sending notifications to myself.
